We are delighted to announce the appointment of Shilpa Varma as our Writer in Residence, marking an exciting new chapter in our commitment to storytelling that crosses borders, cultures, and genres.
With 16 years of experience across animation, television, digital media, and theatre, Shilpa brings a wealth of creative expertise to the Flame Tree team. An MFA graduate from Drama Studio London, she has held senior creative roles at major entertainment companies, including The Walt Disney Company and Turner International India, where she led script development and production teams. Her diverse portfolio ranges from writing flagship animated series for Cartoon Network India to adapting major content for Disney, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV aimed at Indian audiences.
Now based at Flame Tree’s offices in London, Shilpa is fully immersed in two key projects developed in-house. She is currently writing When the Forest Watches, a folk-horror mini-series and podcast. The story follows a documentary filmmaker who, while capturing the disappearing tribal traditions of a remote Indian village, inadvertently disturbs an ancient spiritual balance. Alongside this, Shilpa is writing a fortnightly blog series for Flame Tree titled Between Worlds. Through warm, witty and insightful essays, she reflects on her personal journey navigating the cultural contrasts between India and the UK – from Sunday lunches and supermarket rituals to gender roles and the sacred art of queuing.
Shilpa’s residency is a testament to Flame Tree’s commitment to fostering innovative, culturally aware storytelling that speaks to our diverse and global readership.
Publisher and Creative Director of Flame Tree Publishing, Nick Wells, says:
“The appointment of Shilpa as our Writer in Residence is a significant milestone for Flame Tree as we continue to seek beyond the everyday, to see the world from a different perspective and support the skilful craft of creative individuals in the greater community. We have a long-term initiative to support literacy and encourage self-expression through language and the arts, Shilpa’s work with us offers a determined response to that vision.”
Independent and inclusive, Flame Tree publishes a wide range of new fiction titles, gorgeous notebooks and art calendars. We bring the beautiful, and the practical to the art of fine gifts, and the fine art of reading.
We enjoy a partnership with our wide community of readers, artists and authors, offering inspiration, and delight in the familiar and the new. We actively encourage new writers, and artists, alongside the established. Recent highlights include Black Sci-Fi Short Stories, First Peoples Shared Stories and Immigrant Sci-fi. We work with academics, editors and writers from different communities to mediate our publications and constantly seek new mentors, editors and authors to help us extend our reach for submissions beyond the standard publishing routes.
The Flame Tree programme reflects an ever-growing journey from living tradition to the speculative, covering the entire range of storytelling from the distant past to the far future, expressed through literature and art.
Shilpa Varma, Writer in Residence (2025)
